My Interview with a radical Anti-Neurodiversity blogger

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Shahunshah
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04 Jan 2017, 12:20 am

Hello everyone today I interviewed Oliver Canby an anti-Neurodiversity blogger with extreme views. I found the experience fascinating and I hope all of you find it as interesting as I did.



yelekam
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04 Jan 2017, 1:29 pm

My response to Canby
• I would not say that autistic people don’t face any issues or challenges or that society is exclusively the cause of our conditions in life. I would say however that everybody or all sorts have issues and challenges in their lives, whether they are autistic, doxist, or whatever other mental state. But when you have society, who’s organization favors benefiting the talents and mitigating the challenges of certain groups over others, then it gives those groups advantages and increases the challenges faced by the non-favored groups. That society has often been organized in manor advantageous to doxists and to the effective disadvantage of autistics and other non-doxists is somethings which is historically the case.
• Could medical science one day figure eliminate autism, theoretically its possible, the question is should it be done, and for that I would say no. This effort is a problem not for implausibility, but for intellectual derangement. It suffers from a similar intellectual derangement, as had been at play with those who classified homosexuality as a mental illness and tried to sure it; it is using a distorted value for classifying health, based on normality, which ends up pathologizing natural differences, which by their objective value are not necessarily bad or less problematic than the norm is.
• Furthermore, seeking a cure is problematic because of the damage it does to people through the mentality it encourages. It encourages a toxic mentality, which treats autistic traits as negative and pathological, exacerbates negative emotions in others, and channels these negative feelings into efforts to try to eliminate autism. When people have been encouraging to take on negative views of autism and to channel their distress against it, then it can push them to be more willing to engage in harmful practices in an effort to get rid of it. This has lead historically and in current days to abuse and harmful treatments, such as forced institutionalization, electrocution, packing, and the drinking of diluted bleach. Beyond the abusive treatment it encourages, it encourages a rejection of the subjective traits of the autistic individual by others, which can lead to a denial and/or lack of consideration of the thinking, feelings, and wishes of the autistic person, and the disregard of their efforts to communicate their will.
• These are among the reasons I would contend neurodiversity to be preferable to curism. With it there can be a removal of the perverted normality model of medicine, and a recognition that the autistic person has their claim to their universal personhood. In recognizing that autism and autistic traits are not necessarily negative, then focus can be turned to things which actually improve the lives of autistic people and their ability to act in society.
• I would not endorse the personal attack of people who disagree with neurodiversity. If some who have acted in the name of it have, that ought not to be used to stereotype the movement as a whole. Virtually any movement, with a large enough size, has at least some individuals who are mean spirited or misguided in their tactics, but that does not mean that you have to condemn the movement as a whole.
• These high-function low function labels are arbitrary distinctions, which do not reflect the actual complexities of the variations of the autism spectrum, but rather are oversimplified caricatures, and should not be treated like absolute distinctions.
• The objections to the tracking bill are in large part because the bill is poorly written and has loopholes in which it is possible that people who are capable of acting and traveling on their own could be forcibly implanted with chips against their will. If the bill had been better written to ensure that it would only be used for the express purpose of wanderers and had provisions to ensure that it was used as such, then that would be a different story.
• If you are changing how a person thinks, reasons, experiences sensory input, how they feel, what their interests are, how they communicate, how they interact with others, and virtually other part of them as a subjective being, aren’t you changing who they are in some sense? It would seem so. Furthermore, claiming that a cure would make a person more of who they are presumes that the autistic traits are somethings alien to the person rather than part of who they are. To that matter I would very much disagree, I would find that the autistic traits constitute a subject of individual traits, and thus not separable from the individual as incarnate being. And I can say with great assurance that without my autistic traits, I would not be who I am today, and that I would be considerably poorer in life without them.
• I would contend that neurodiversity does not mean blaming society for all of one’s own problems. There’s a difference between that and calling out society for the ways in which its institutions have encourages mistreating people who do not fit normative standards.
• Lacking empathy is not an autistic trait. What autistic people tend to have issues with is the cognitive interpretation of sensory data from other people for theorizing their potential states of emotions. That is very much different from a person who lacks the emotional capacity to care about the feelings of others when one is able to discern them. Autism and psychopathy have very different issues on matters of empathy. Unfortunately, people misinterpreted the very imprecise label of lacking empathy to mean something very different from what it does.
When you use rhetoric such as calling for the execution of neurodiversity activists, especially with the autistic tendency to read things literally, than it’s not surprising that people think you want to violate human rights. If a neurodiversity activist said that they wanted to have anti-neurodiversity people executed, how would you think about that? Would you assume they were being serious or metaphorical?



androbot01
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04 Jan 2017, 1:44 pm

I don't think he was radical. What he said made sense. Denying something does make it hard to progress.



Shahunshah
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04 Jan 2017, 2:40 pm

androbot01 wrote:
I don't think he was radical. What he said made sense. Denying something does make it hard to progress.
You would have to see what he says according to Autism Wiki but yes some of what he says can be considered radical.



ASPartOfMe
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04 Jan 2017, 5:00 pm

yelekam wrote:

• I would not endorse the personal attack of people who disagree with neurodiversity. If some who have acted in the name of it have, that ought not to be used to stereotype the movement as a whole. Virtually any movement, with a large enough size, has at least some individuals who are mean spirited or misguided in their tactics, but that does not mean that you have to condemn the movement as a whole.
• These high-function low function labels are arbitrary distinctions, which do not reflect the actual complexities of the variations of the autism spectrum, but rather are oversimplified caricatures, and should not be treated like absolute distinctions.


I agree with mostly or all of your reply but prefer to comment on these two.

I am sick and tired of ND advocates being successfully painted as High Functioning/Aspergers who are against any treatments at all and view Autism as only a gift that makes autistics superior to NT's. There are Neurodiversity advocates who do not fall into the stereotyped categories. Most people who have pro ND views view it as a condition that that good and bad parts and while not in favor of a cure are in favor of treatments. What many of of them do disagree with are certain treatments most notably those informed by Applied Behavioral Analysis. Because one does not not like ABA does not mean one is against all treatments, it means not liking those based on ABA. As far as Autistic Supremacists they exist but are a small minority. "NT bashing" is constantly criticized on WP. That does not mean I think ASAN and the ND movement are above criticism, I will do just that in the next paragraph. In the interview Shahunshah pointed out support for the ABLE act, ASAN has lobbied against shock treatments given to Autistics at the Judge Rotenberg Center, against the fact it is legal to pay disabled workers less then the minimum wage. Elitist "Shiny Aspies" are not the type of Autistics that are prisoners at the Judge Rotenberg Center, nor are they generally working at sheltered workshops for sub minimum wage. While ND activists describe autism as a difference or a variant, it should be noted that ASAN and Steve Silberman label it also as a "disability".

I do feel that the leading ND advocates are uninformed and underestimate their opposition. It is not so much NT's these days but their fellow autistics. The media has published a lot of stories about the ND movement and Autistics accomplishing things in the last couple of years. The ND mantra is "nothing about us, without us" but IMHO they are not doing what they preach because they underestimate the autistic opposition. I have seen a bunch of posts from ASAN touting their accomplishments which considering their resources vs the establishment is impressive. But with suicide ideation rates higher then not only the NT population but people with other mental conditions and disabilities most Autistics are not benefitting from them. IMHO being a small minority and society hostility and misunderstanding explains a lot of it but far from explains all of this nightmare situation. Maybe the people saying "It's the Autism, stupid" are right or partially right. People doing and accomplishing things for the right reasons have been finding out the hard way how out of touch they are in the last year. Finding out a lot people who you thought you were helping think you are a harmful elitist is a b***h. In our case the failure to listen will have the consequences of going backwards, more negativity, more harmful treatments, and maybe being gene edited out of existence. ND movement leaders, stop assuming progress is inevitable.


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TLPG
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13 Feb 2017, 12:55 am

I was linked to this interview directly by a friend, and I wish I'd known about it sooner.

Shahunshah, I am certain that if you had been more challenging and probing with your questions, Canby would have come out with the very same rhetoric you spoke of on his blog - especially in the comments of the Neurodiversity Amendment thread. He removed many but they were recorded by a third party. What he hasn't deleted though were the death threats he aimed at me. He named me in your interview - calling me a lunatic who should be locked up, simply because he THINKS I was behind the majority of comments when I only posted four times in that entire thread (twice modded out). I can also say about the so called symbolism of the thread that it failed to deliver because it painted Canby as the lunatic - he neglected to mention (because he deleted the comments) that he insisted the Amendment proposal was real and had even been approved by Congress! I'm serious! Take a look at this blog if you don't believe me;

http://lockolivercanbyup.wordpress.com

Yelakam's observations are spot on at a glance. Also I would add that it was never confirmed that Elliot Rodger was Autistic. Lanza was - but then he went mad because he completely rejected his diagnosis and treated it like it didn't exist (his father observed this in an interview with the New York Times I think about 12 months after Sandy Hook). Canby has a history of doing the same thing, although not to the same extent.

One last thing for completeness - Shahunshah referenced the Autism Wiki (Wikia actually). I am primarily responsible for the creation of that article, initially on Rational Wiki - only to have the morons there butcher it leaving a shell - and then on the Autism Wikia. Everything there is sourced and true and correct. And my next edit will include this interview. I ask that it remain up no matter what Canby asks. And on the matter of the death threats - that is not a closed issue. Just saying.



Shahunshah
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13 Feb 2017, 1:57 am

TLPG wrote:
I was linked to this interview directly by a friend, and I wish I'd known about it sooner.

Shahunshah, I am certain that if you had been more challenging and probing with your questions, Canby would have come out with the very same rhetoric you spoke of on his blog - especially in the comments of the Neurodiversity Amendment thread. He removed many but they were recorded by a third party. What he hasn't deleted though were the death threats he aimed at me. He named me in your interview - calling me a lunatic who should be locked up, simply because he THINKS I was behind the majority of comments when I only posted four times in that entire thread (twice modded out). I can also say about the so called symbolism of the thread that it failed to deliver because it painted Canby as the lunatic - he neglected to mention (because he deleted the comments) that he insisted the Amendment proposal was real and had even been approved by Congress! I'm serious! Take a look at this blog if you don't believe me;

http://lockolivercanbyup.wordpress.com

Yelakam's observations are spot on at a glance. Also I would add that it was never confirmed that Elliot Rodger was Autistic. Lanza was - but then he went mad because he completely rejected his diagnosis and treated it like it didn't exist (his father observed this in an interview with the New York Times I think about 12 months after Sandy Hook). Canby has a history of doing the same thing, although not to the same extent.

One last thing for completeness - Shahunshah referenced the Autism Wiki (Wikia actually). I am primarily responsible for the creation of that article, initially on Rational Wiki - only to have the morons there butcher it leaving a shell - and then on the Autism Wikia. Everything there is sourced and true and correct. And my next edit will include this interview. I ask that it remain up no matter what Canby asks. And on the matter of the death threats - that is not a closed issue. Just saying.

Thanks. I used your site for some of the references in the interview. So some of the credit for me being able to conduct this goes to you.

I do not know the whole story between you and Canby if he did death threats that is not okay.

It probably isn't a good idea to challenge to much. You don't know what your getting at in these interviews and provoking is not always a good idea.